Somali government troops opened fire Friday on hungry civilians, killing at least seven people, as both groups made a grab for food at a U.N. distribution site in the capital of this famine-stricken country, witnesses said.

The number of Afghan civilians hospitalised for serious war wounds has doubled in 12 months in Kandahar, the focus of an ongoing US-led campaign against Taliban strongholds. In August and September, Mirwais regional hospital in the country’s second biggest city admitted almost 1,000 new patients with weapons injuries, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The total for the same period of 2009 was 500.

The Red Cross reported a “drastic increase” in the number of amputations from war injuries, reflecting the nature of the violence.

By Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA)Zamboanga City, Philippines_(dpa) _A Philippine court on Wednesday ordered the release of seven people arrested for allegedly providing support to Muslim militants holding captive two European Red Cross workers.

By Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA)

The suspects – three police officers, two village captains and two alleged members of the Abu Sayyaf rebel group – were freed two days after police filed criminal charges of kidnapping for ransom and illegal detention against them.

They were arrested on Jolo island, 1,000 kilometres south of Manila, last week on suspicion of being supporters of al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf rebels, Governor Abdusakur Tan said.

A woman walks near barbed wire at an internally displaced camp set up in Vavuniya for Tamils who have escaped the war zone.

Sri Lanka’s government says its 25-year war is nearing its conclusion as troops close in on Tamil Tiger rebels cornered in a tiny patch of land on the northeast coast. Aid agencies are warning of possibly dire humanitarian consequences for tens of thousands of civilians trapped with the Tigers in the shrinking war zone. And even after the conflict is over, the fate of civilians remains a serious concern. Here are some questions and answers about the fate of civilians caught up in Asia’s longest-running war:

HOW MANY CIVILIANS ARE AFFECTED? According to the United Nations and Red Cross, about 150,000 civilians are trapped inside the rapidly shrinking “no-fire zone”, a strip of land just 7 km long and 2 km wide (4 miles by 1.2 miles) along the northeastern coast. The government says that there are less than 100,000 there. The United Nations and rights groups say the Tigers have held people as human shields or conscripts. Some civilians who have managed to flee the no-fire zone report being fired on by the rebels or seeing friends and relatives forcibly recruited to fight. The U.N. and rights groups also say the government has shelled the densely packed no-fire zone, which the government denies as Tiger propaganda. Aid workers estimate about 5,000 civilians have managed to escape in the past two weeks, joining around 65,000 people who are being held in government-controlled camps.